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Top Priority: Dance by Rebekah Martinez Grupo Fantasma captures the dance party atmosphere of their live shows on Movimiento Popular, the Independent group’s energetic album of Mexican cumbia, salsa grooves, jazzy guitar, and plenty of percussion and horns. The nearly four-year-old band, Grupo Fantasma, which started out in Austin as an impromptu collaboration between two separate bands, has managed to cohere in a relatively short amount of time. Their vivid, rolling combination of conventional cumbias and Tejano melts along with Latin funk, salsa, progressive jazz and a little hip hop that crops up in delighting spurts. The two bands, one a Latin funk outfit, the other a jazz group, were able to significantly alter their merging sonic landscape by adding to it an already big rhythm section and a tight collection of horns. “We started out with seven guys, and somehow ended up with 12,” says guitarist Adrian Quesada. “As we added more Latin territory to the mix, we had to add more people.” Its members, who are spread out from Laredo, Austin and Corpus Christi to New York and Iowa, all happened to bring with them a general knowledge of roots music as well as a deep respect for it. “Our sound has been a very natural progression for us – there’s a big stigma in Austin with local bands where they all are supposed to have this Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues rock thing going on. There aren’t too many progressive Latin jazz bands or even non-traditional salsa groups, so when we started we were just trying to fill that void,” says Quesada. “We don’t force a contemporary sound on anything but we stayed away from traditional salsa not because we didn’t like it, but because there’s not a lot you can do with what’s already been done. We take more of a punk rock approach instead of that of a traditional salsa orchestra.” That fact is written all over their much talked about live shows. Heavy horns and percussion, plenty of thumping bass and pulsating funk, electric guitars and jangly cumbias line their repertoire, making the dance floor a top priority in their shows. It also drives the heady party atmosphere of their second album, the recently released Movimiento Popular. “We’re known for being a live band and we wanted to capture the live sound. It’s difficult to do that,” says Quesada. With the introduction of their first effort, a record Quesada calls “youthful” and “unformed,” the group was quickly lauded for revitalizing a weak Latin scene in Austin, but also for forging a growing reputation as they plug on, selling a respectable amount of albums and selling out most of their several tour dates. In spite of almost immediate interest from labels and managers, with Movimeniento, Grupo maintains an independent approach, relying largely on word of mouth to spur sales and garner fans. The album took a full year to make; the all-Spanish compositions -- largely written by percussionist/vocalist Jose Galeano and saxophonist Joseph Serrato – turned into a 16-song collection of high energy and was entirely produced, packaged and distributed by the group. They’ve enjoyed a moderate pass at mainstream success, contributing a song (“Cana Brava”) to the John Sayles film “Casa de los Babys,” adding some horns to Control Machete’s new album and working with Los Lobos. Their tours, both small and large scale, have proven effective as well. In March, Grupo played its third SXSW show at the showcase in Austin to an attendance rate between 5 and 10,000 people. They’re now embarking on their fifth nationwide tour and are expecting to hit the northeast and the west coast as well as their usual grounds in the south. “When it came down to it, we were always labeled “too this, too that,” and we had our own vision so even though we don’t have the financial backing a label provides, we’ve been able to do some pretty big things independently,” Quesada says. The trick now is maintaining the band as a full time job for all of its members (some of who still hold a few day jobs). It could be argued that distributing and marketing themselves almost entirely independently is a full time job in itself, not that the band isn’t up for it: “Everything we do for ourselves came about out of necessity. We have the luxury now of no one looking over our shoulders, total creative control, that kind of thing,” Quesada says. “In the end, it’s strictly our vision and this is how we’re going to stick with it.”	Grupo Fantasma. » Listen to GRUPO FANTASMA on Batanga's CUMBIA station » Subscribe to Club Batanga to watch videos and more! "Everything we do for ourselves came about out of necessity," -- Grupo Fantasma

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